Posts by A Non e-mouse

I used to do a lot more with awk in the past but nowadays Python tends to be my go-to scripting language.

Is Python as fast or as efficient as tool X? Maybe not. But I rarely need absolute performance and, being a jack-of-all-trades, keeping a reasonable understanding of a small number of tools is the way to a simpler life.

Not quite.

Within the Java 8 releases, Oracle changd the license terms for their JVM. Other JVMs are still freely available.

The bigger issue is that in Java 9 Oracle added modules. This broke code that didn't support the feature.

Wikipedia has a lengthy article on it.

Short version: Death from the immediate incident: 30. Deaths from the longer term issue. No agreed number but estimates are in the range 4,000 - 16,000, with one estimate going as high as 60,000.

Re: Lack of vision since 1999

x86 has killed almost every traditional RISC server/workstation processor out there regardless of how optimized the software was

Did x86 win out because it was the better processor, or did it win out due to little software being available for other processors?

e.g. Windows NT was available for a variety of CPUs* yet little end user software was available for it.

ARM is only now gaining ground as it started out in a niche (embedded) that x86 couldn't compete in.

* I heard the other day that NT was originally written on something other than x86 then ported to x86 to prove how portable NT was.

Re: Not near wind farms

Some of these perhaps?

arstechnica.com/science/2022/07/us-regulators-will-certify-first-small-nuclear-reactor-design/

Re: How do you turn it off again?

"Perfection is the enemy of the good."

Will this prevent state-sponsored attackers stealing your data? Nope.

Will help prevent idle browsing of your holiday photos by repair techs? Yes.

Re: mailman upgrade

I think a lot of Mailman 2 users are moving to Sympa for similar reasons.

That's not a fair comparision: Openreach has the ability to undercut CityFibre by abusing its size over CityFibre.

Re: Quite apart from online...

There's the theory that if you're putting yourself forwards for policitial office you've immediately ruled yourself out as being unsuitable.

Re: Going back to the Moon is required, but there's a problem

I'm sure I've seen a video recently where they discuss this exact problem and claim that there are ways to reduce the amount of dust.

Re: IIRC Wordperfect was powerful enough to handle writing the Boeing manual sets for their aircraft

I thought they'd moved to things such as SGML based documentation?

Re: My advice, as ever

Who can remember the fun we had with DOS & Smartdrive

Re: Eggplant

Having your in-group slang be incomprehensible to outsiders (especially your parents) is the goal

Which has been going on for many, many years. Cockney Rhyming Slang for one.

Re: Larger still

I don't think the universe needs to be infinite for the probability of life out there to be close to 1. Even within our own galaxy I'd suggest the chance of life is close to 1. Factoring in all the other galaxies we currently know about pushes the odds even closer to 1.

I think you're being generous. You could just replace "efficient" with "expensive" and that would suffice.

Re: Here we go...

To be fair to El Reg, Elon has made himself $200bn richer. What have the Love Islanders done?

I feel very dirty now (and not in a good way)

Re: Zip drives...

I was looking for a driver for one, and typed zip.com into the browser. Oops.

IIRC it was a gay dating site. Nothing there now.

In the days before adult filters on search engines, I'd often search for something for work and end up and adult websites. I thought I knew a lot of porn slang: Clearly I was way more naive than I thought!

Re: How to write space software

To me, the biggest take away is that they agree what the software is supposed to do from the outset, before they even think of writing code. How many of us have been involved with software projects where the specs keep on changing? If you can have agreed specs, it makes it so much easier.

(The "don't blame the person, blame the process" culture is important too: It allows everyone to learn from mistakes)